Book Review: One Second After

Wow, so I have quite a few thoughts on this one. Overall, I liked it. Good story line-terrifying but great.

Basically, there is an EMP explosion that goes off over America, which shuts down any and all electronics. The book is set up from the perspective of the main character, a veteran named John who has been working as a history professor. John’s wife died four years before, and he has two daughters, two dogs, and his wife’s mom and dad to take care of during this crisis. He reacts well because he had heard of this happening. He was one person who seemed to know what was going on long before anyone else.

It’s definitely interesting to see how people deal with the crisis. Of course, there are riots, there are people stealing, there are so many things going on. It seemed like it took a few days to really settle in that the town was in trouble. At first, people were in disbelief almost, as no one knew what was going on.

The town eventually banded together with one other town in order to stop the refugees coming from the big city. They could hardly take care of their own people, much less thousands of others.

Anyway, they face quite a few different obstacles and problems. They take a lot of losses. It’s hard to get through without getting kind of emotional, to be honest. So, I can’t give away much more without spoiling the story, but it’s definitely worth the read. It makes me worried that it is actually a possibility and kind of makes me want to become one of those “crazy” people who have stockpiles of food and supplies in their basements. Maybe they aren’t so crazy after all.

The only things I didn’t like about this book is the way some of the women were portrayed. I normally do not read books written by men. I think that men struggle writing women. Maybe it’s also the other way around, I’m not sure. But the women men write always seem…unrealistic somehow. I had a lot of problems with the refugee women offering their bodies up to stay, and the patrols saying that “happened all the time.” I think maybe some women would be driven to do that. However, not enough for it to be a regular occurrence. The other thing I didn’t like was it went into so many details about battles and other items that I found somewhat too much details. I’m more about big picture than details.

Last but not least, I didn’t like how many people had to die! It was like when you used to play Oregon Trail and every character you cared about dropped dead. It definitely added to the realism of the book and to the eeriness about how it might actually happen.

Anyway, I give this book a 3.5/5. I am off to go start my end of the word stockpile.